No, each did a Something Grander than ever he dreamed to do;
And as for the work unfinished, all will be paid their due;
The broken ends will be fitted, the balance struck will be true.
So painters, and players, and penmen, I tell you: Do as you please;
Let your fame outleap on the trumpets, you’ll never rise up to these–
To three grim and gory Tommies, down, down on your bended knees!
Daventry, the sculptor, is buried in a little graveyard near one of our posts. Just now our section of the line is quiet, so I often go and sit there. Stretching myself on a flat stone, I dream for hours.
Silence and solitude! How good the peace of it all seems! Around me the grasses weave a pattern, and half hide the hundreds of little vooden crosses. Here is one with a single name:
Aubrey.
Who was Aubrey I wonder? Then another:
To Our Beloved Comrade.
Then one which has attached to it, in the cheapest of little frames, the crude water-color daub of a child, three purple flowers standing in a yellow vase. Below it, painfully printed, I read:
